Something Nasty
by Lira is a Girl's Name
Summary: Backstory fic. Thirteen-year-old Lamont Toucey isn't quite big enough to hold his own when his big brothers gang up on him, but he did not expect to run into a supernatural nasty while tending to his wounds up in the attic. Or for her to be a tiny bat.


AN: The recent strips and reappearance of not only Lamont, but Adelaide as well, made me want to write backstory fic. Worth is the character I have the most personal headcanon for, but Lamont is Worth's best and oldest friend and I've been wanting to hammer out some aspects of his past for a while. My Lamont has a French father and an Italian mother with the typical big Italian family. He has two older brothers, one younger brother, and one little baby sister. It's also part of my headcanon that as per what Lamont's bio on the cast page used to say, he knows all of the supernatural people in the city whether or not they know it themselves. He also started running into those types around the time he hit puberty. This is the first of his really close encounters with the supernatural - when a thirteen year old Lamont first met Adelaide. This can be interpreted as pre-ship if you like, but is completely possible to view from a gen angle. Anyway, Hanna is Not a Boy's Name is still the property of the marvelous Tessa Stone; I am making no money and mean no trespass.

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SOMETHING NASTY

-by: Lira-

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The tapping at the window was so quiet, Lamont almost didn't hear it.

Lamont hadn't bothered pulling the cord to light the single bare bulb in the attic, already knowing how to navigate the maze of antiques and heirlooms and useless crap that inhabited the cluttered space. It was where the things his stubborn mamma could not part with went to die. He was sitting beneath the sole window to the space, where the watery moonlight was just enough to cast wavering charcoal shadows.

Lamont was gingerly moving his arm to and fro, sure he'd just heard a crash down below, and then again the faint tapping. Just once he couldn't take his older brothers' brawling, not when he'd already sprained his wrist and his shoulder was still dislocated from that last fight with Luce in the hallway after school. They had another detention, but at least /_Lamont_/ wasn't the one to have received a real, paying job from their father, money in the pocket, only to blow the thing sky-high.

He kind of hoped they punched each other's faces in, the idiots. If he was only /_old_/ enough to get trusted with /_anything_,/ he was sure he wouldn't blow it as spectacularly as his moronic eldest sibling. But thirteen-year-olds were not allowed access to the family car, even if they already knew how to hotwire it and wouldn't run it into a lamp-post as the second-eldest Toucey brother had done.

The tapping came again, except this time Lamont thought it sounded more like scratching. He startled, popped his shoulder again, and that time the low laughter that bubbled out was carried out on a muffled his of pain. Luce always had painkillers, fuck only knew where the asshole got them, except he still wasn't hurting enough to admit to Luce that he needed help. Not yet, not this time, he'd be able to take it if he just avoided the latest fight presently ensuing downstairs.

Lamont hissed in and turned around, rising on his knees to peer out the window. There was a shadow cast against the frame, and he fumbled the latch before pushing outward, creating a gap hardly larger than his hand.

"Hurry up," a low voice hissed. "Invite me inside."

Oh no. Oh no, no, no. Not now.

"Who is it?" he insisted on asking, stubborn.

"Never you mind," the voice crooned. "I'm not going to beg. Haven't you any manners?"

Lamont couldn't stop the chuckles, although he tried to hush, and the motion set his ribs to aching. He knew it sounded more like pain than humor, or even the cocktail of nerves that was the real explanation; he'd forgotten his ribcage was still just a little bit bruised. The voice was feminine, he could tell that for certain now, high and almost coaxing, the words playing upon the manners his mamma had tried to drill into her boys.

"C-Come inside then," he found himself saying, in a stage whisper.

What tumbled over the windowsill looked like a little purple fuzzball, like something his mamma might use to powder her nose. It caught itself before hitting the floor, wings snapping out to fan sluggishly, gentling the landing. It still landed on what had to be its stomach, wings spread, little beady eyes peering up at him as it jostled itself into a crouch. The wings folded in around the little furry body, like it was hugging itself.

It was a bat, It was a tiny, violently purple bat, and it was talking to him.

"Now shut the window like a good little boy," she coached him. "Wouldn't want anything nasty to come following me."

"You're something nasty yourself, aren't you," Lamont said, not quite a question. His manners covered ladies, but did not fully extend to talking animals.

"If you caught me on a good night," she said, like she was proud of it.

"Well then what are you doing talking to me?" he asked, because he was curious. "Why aren't you still out there, ha ha, I don't know, stalking the night?"

She peered at him out of one tiny little eye. "A boy like you ought to know sometimes there are folks bigger than you, and sometimes the best course is to bide your time."

"You mean hide," Lamont said. Even though it was what he was doing, and even though he was hoping his brothers wouldn't realize that he was still smaller than them, and easy to corner, and that if they both started beating the crap out of him instead they would both feel a lot better.

"I mean hide," she agreed, although it was in an angry hiss. "There shouldn't be shame about it, you silly human. Live to fight another day."

"You're a purple fuzzball," Lamont told her. "I don't know why, eheheh, I'm even listening to you."

She flapped forward, landing against the toe of his shoe, still looking up at him with eyes that were cold and distinctly inhuman, and not just because they were set in a tiny face with whiskers.

"Because you're a fearful little brat hiding from your problems, and that makes what I'm telling you especially appealing," she said, so that he wanted to believe every word. "Now pick me up. I'm freezing."

She gave a little shudder, and even though Lamont suspected it was just for show, he reached down and scooped the little body into his hands. She curled her little claws around his thumbs, and held on.

"Well, higher," she demanded.

It seemed foolish to listen to her. She had admitted, in a way, to not being anything nice, but at the same time what she was suggesting had such appeal. Lamont knew, in a way, that he couldn't always be at a disadvantage. His brothers were imbeciles, almost more belligerent than Luce, and there was no way his father was going to leave the business to either of them. But at the same time, he sort of wanted to give them all the finger and prove that he could make something all by himself, no sign of handouts. He liked the thought that, with time, his position would be more fortuitous.

And he was pretty sure if he lifted her up she wouldn't try to claw his face off.

Lamont turned and settled back against the wall, braced beneath the tiny window. He lifted her small, dramatically-shivering body and placed it against his chest, hands still gently wrapped around her to provide the asked-for warmth. She even curled against him a little, claws hooking in the material of his shirt and holding on.

"Not so bad, for a fat little greasy kid," he heard her murmur, drowsily.

"Aww, shit," he cursed, but quietly. Even a bat was insulting him. Luce would be cracking the fuck up.

"Hunters are the worst," she mumbled into his shirt, a bit later, when Lamont was sure she had to be warming up.

He didn't ask what she meant, because he suspected he already knew. He just... Didn't like thinking about it. He tended to laugh, and stumble, when things like this happened, tended to wind his way free and pretend like nothing was ever any different. It was just hard when he got Luce into it too, when Luce wouldn't just cut and run and they both got their asses handed to them, and when Lamont couldn't deny that there had been something a little funny about whatever they'd run into.

But at least none of them had followed him home and crawled into his attic and whined about whatever was hunting them when he'd actually gone along with their demands.

Lamont must have dozed off a little, his arms relaxing by his sides so that he let go of the small burden resting against him. It was enough to cast doubt, enough to make him think that maybe he'd imagined the entire conversation. Maybe Luce had slipped him something for shits, Lamont didn't know.

But Lamont dimly recollected the weight shifting from that of a small body to that of a hand, pale fingers curling tight into his shirt in mimicry of those tiny claws. Knees were planted to either side of his waist, soft female form curled over him so that a curtain of dark hair cascaded down to brush against his face. The reason Lamont knew it had to be an imagining, some figment of his tired mind, was because her white, cool flesh was entirely bare. Only the fall of her hair and the position of her body protected her modesty.

"Thank you, little boy," she murmured, voice baby-soft. Her luminous red eyes were unblinking, trained upon his face with a look that was almost rapt. "Your kindness will not be so easily forgotten. I think I have whiled away time enough."

Her hand trailed down his chest, lightly, the sensation faint enough that it could still be unreal. She leaned in, mouth soft and pink and for that second the only thing in his vision, before she leaned to the side and planted one light kiss to his cheek. Even then her mouth was cool, and he couldn't feel even one exhale of breath as she again pulled away.

She sprang back from crouching over him with perfect feline grace, stretching so that the long line of her body was not so easily camouflaged. Lamont found himself watching the curve of one hip as she arched away from him, pushed the window above him open once more. Those eyes, still unblinking, cast down yet again, and Lamont received the distinct impression that she was questioning whether or not she should leave him so easily. He had never before felt like someone was looking at him as less than a person, least of all by such a beautiful woman. It was more like he was some sort of confectionery marvel, and not a stupid kid who had thought to help out someone – something, he didn't even know – who had done no more but ask it of him.

The window was open, and Lamont saw her pull her foot up to the sill. But he must still have been dreaming, just a bit, because her body seemed to melt more than she vaulted out the window, and it was the little purple bat he witnessed winging away from the house. Her shape was, for just a moment, silhouetted in that space.

Lamont rubbed his eyes, on reflex, and rolled out of a seated position that had long since caused his limbs and back to go stiff. He pulled himself up and shut the window, ducking a little and weaving through the attic to the trap door. The house was dark and quiet below, proof of the passage of time.

Lamont really only wished that if he was going to have fantasies of lovely women, they would leave him with something more enduring than a light kiss of simple gratitude.


End file.
